1983

I watch Mrs Marsh open her front door. I watch her lock it. I watch her come back down the garden path. I watch her get inside the car. I watch them talk for a minute. I watch them set off.

I toss a coin -

I look at the top of my hand:

Tails -

I wait.

Ten minutes later, I open the gate to the field behind the bungalows. I walk up the tractor path towards the row of sheds at the top of the hill. The track is muddy and the sky grey above me, the field full of dark water and the smell of dead animals.

Halfway up the hill, I turn around. I look back down at the little white van outside their little brown bungalow and their little brown garden, next to all the other little brown bungalows and their little brown gardens.

I take off my glasses. I wipe them on my handkerchief. I put them back on.

I start walking again -

I come to the top of the hill. I come to the sheds:

An evil sleeping village of weatherbeaten tarpaulin and plastic fertiliser bags, damp stolen house bricks with rusting corrugated iron roofs.

I walk through this Village of the Damned. I come to the end of the row -

To the one with the blackest door and the rotten sacks nailed over its windows.

I knock on the door -

Nothing.

I open the black door -

I step inside:

There is a workbench and tools, bags of fertiliser and cement, pots and trays, the floor covered with empty plastic bags.

I step towards the bench. I step on something -

Something under the sacks and bags.

I kick away the sacks and bags. I see a piece of rope, thick and muddy and hooked through a manhole cover -

I wrap the rope around my hands. I hoist the cover up. I swing it off to one side -

There is a hole.

I look into the hole -

It is a ventilation shaft to a mine. It is dark and narrow. The sides of the shaft are made of stone, metal rungs hammered into them.

I can hear the sound of dripping water down below. I look closer -

There is a light, faint but there -

Fifty feet down there.

I take off my coat. I take off my jacket. I lower myself down into the shaft, hands and boots upon the metal ladder -

Everything dark. Everything wet -

Everything cold, down I go.

Ten feet. Twenty feet -

Thirty feet, down I go.

Forty feet. Fifty feet -

Towards the light, I go.

Then the wall at my back ends. I turn around -

There is a passageway. There is a light.

I heave myself out of the vertical shaft into the horizontal tunnel -

It is narrow. It is made of bricks. It stretches off into the light.

I can hear strange music playing far away:

The only thing you ever learn in school is ABC -

I crawl upon my belly across the bricks towards the light -

But all I want to know about is you and me -

Crawl upon my belly across the bricks towards the light -

I went and told the teacher about the thing we found -

Upon my belly across the bricks towards the light -

But all she said to me is that you’re out of bounds -

My belly across the bricks towards the light -

Even though we broke the rule I only want to be with you -

Belly across the bricks towards the light -

School love -

Across the bricks towards the light -

School love -

The bricks towards the light -

You and I will be together -

Bricks towards the light -

End of term until forever -

Towards the light -

School love -

The light -

School love -

Light -

The music stops. The ceiling rises. There are beams of wood among the bricks.

I stagger on, arms and legs bleeding -

Stagger on through the shingle and the shale. The sound of rats here with me -

Near.

I put out my hand. I touch a shoe -

A child’s shoe, a sandal -

A child’s summer sandal. It is covered in dust -

I wipe away the dust -

Scuffed.

I put it down. I move on -

My back ripped raw from the beams, the burden.

Then the ceiling rises again. I stand upright in the shadow of a pile of rock -

I breathe. I breathe. I breathe.

I turn the corner past the pile of fallen rock and -

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

I am falling -

Falling -

Falling -

Falling:

Backward from this place -

This rotten un-fresh place -

Her voice, Mandy’s voice -

She is calling -

Calling -

Calling -